What a busy weekend! Two actually. Our stone guys came out and finished the limestone walkway in the front yard. I built an arbor in the front yard that will hopefully be covered in roses. We'll see more on these later. And last but not least, last weekend we had a diseased 50' pecan tree in the backyard removed.
I felt really bad about it. The decision was made easier when our tree guy, an arborist, was worried that if we had high winds, it might end up in our bedroom. Now don't get me wrong, I love trees, I just don't relish the idea of sharing my bed with them. Once we decided it had to come down, the drama began. Tree guy had already trimmed our other trees, 2 other 50' pecans, a 60' cottonwood, 2 35' magnolias, an arizona ash, and a hackberry.
We had branches everywhere, but we also had more firewood.
But I digress. Our sick pecan's branches were over the electrical and cable wires that ran to our house. Tree guy came back the day after trimming the rest to remove said tree. Branch #1 goes down and hits the wires. The cable stretched so much that it was reachable from the ground. Not good. He felt at this point it might be too dangerous to attempt from the ground. He said he wanted to rent a cherry picker-our original quote at this point doubles-ouch! I proceeded to call our electric company to see if they had any recommendations. They did! Their policy was that they didn't want us hurting ourselves, so they came and removed the branches that made it dangerous-for my favorite price in the world. Free!
When big branch #1 came down, you guessed it, it took out the cable wire-just shredded it. No cable, internet or phone. Called cable company and they had someone there in 2 hours to replace the cable from the utility pole to the house. Free! Finally, they were able to take the tree down.
All the branches and brush also went away. There was a good sized portion of the inside of the tree that was hollow-scary.
This is one my biggest nightmares. I have an old maple in my front yard and power/cable lines for the four cottages behind me go right through the middle of it. When I moved in, a neighbor walked by and said, "I hope you're going to take good care of this old tree," adding to my anxiety. "Someone" left information in my mailbox about an "organic" arborist that recommended we inject something into the roots--chai tea latte or something like that. I called another arborist who said, "This is an old, old, tree. It's got girdling roots, some kind of untreatable fungus and it wouldn't be worth putting any money into it. Ugh. After a spring thunderstorm left a big limb in my neighbor's front yard, I paid $450 to trim all the dead wood off. I know it's only a matter of time that a neighbor will be chaining themselves to my maple as it's ripping out power to the neighborhood and falling on cars. It's so Cambridge. BTW, I LOVE the shutters on your new header!
ReplyDeleteBeautiful home! We bought a historic home in AZ and there were 8 enormous 50 year old palm trees in the front yard. Timber!!! They were a mess to cut down but well worth it. Now were planting new trees and growth in it's place. I love what you've done here and I'll be visiting often for inspiration while we remodel our home too. Thanks
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